About

Inspired by Celtic, Scandinavian and bluegrass music, Kaptain Bottletop began with the intention of making music inside and outside of the styles we love. Not much has changed in that respect, and we’re looking ever forward to where this thing takes us. Words of greater caliber may come later, but for now it seems sufficient to say that we are Kaptain Bottletop. Skål!

DAVID BOYDEN:

violin, viola, hardanger d’amore, hardingfele

David Boyden is a violinist and fiddler born and bred in the San Francisco Bay Area. From 2004 to 2008, he attended the Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts while studying with several noted violinists, including Kate Stenberg of the Del Sol String Quartet. From 2008 to 2013, he studied with Fred Lifsitz and the Alexander String Quartet at San Francisco State University, where he earned a BM in violin performance. He currently works as a freelancer and teacher, and plays regularly in several groups, including the Pine Needles and the 29th Street Swingtet, and irregularly in several others. From 2012 to 2014, he was intern and musician at the Chrysalis Foundation, playing the original acoustic instruments and music of Cris Forster.

LEE CORBIE-WELLS:

5-string violin, hardanger d’amore, vocals

Lee Corbie-Wells has been playing violin since the age of 6.Her father, a music teacher in San Francisco (Lee’s hometown) and her mother, a music teacher in the Oakland Public School District, taught her Celtic and American tunes by ear, fostering her love of folk music.At the age of 11, she began formal training.In addition to her instrumental studies, Lee sang first soprano in the San Francisco Girls Chorus for five years.She started performing solo at Brava Theatre at the age of 14, but soon got heavily into Celtic roots music.At age 18, Lee toured Southern Ireland with her first band, Drowsy Maggie, along with one of her former violin teachers, Alison Stretch.Since then, she has played in numerous Celtic and Americana bands and her also performed at military functions such as house-concerts at Airforce bases in Travis, CA and in Kuwait.Although she primarily pays Celtic and American fiddle music, Lee has taken her years of experience in Blues and folk improvisation and branched out into explorations of Jazz, Swing, Ragtime, and Latin genres.Before Lee was in Kaptain Bottletop, she helped start the Celtic/Americana/Eastern European folk band Moonshine Jelly, where she sings in English, at least half of the Celtic languages (Lee is a huge language enthusiast), Russian, Greek, and various other languages. She also teaches violin and guitar in the Bay Area.

ALEX HAND:

guitar, master of flame and resident shredder

Alex Hand graduated in 2011 from the University of Nevada, Reno with a Jazz Guitar Performance degree and has lived in the San Francisco area for four years. He has toured internationally with gypsy jazz, Irish, Balkan and rock groups. He teaches guitar and performs locally with the Alex Hand Band, baroque ensemble Les Ameriquains, Kaptain Bottletop, Istanbul Connection and more.